On The Meaning of Life

 

Picture from Quantum Non-Linearity: The Fate of Man, by William Shakespeare

In this post by PZ Myers we find our grumpy atheist responding to a less than 60 second video by a cherub faced American Catholic who challenges atheists over their response to the question of the meaning of life. Here's PZ reaction to that video (My emphases)....

My answer to that question is simple: there is no meaning to life. We just are. We exist, and then we try to rationalize our existence, and everyone comes up with a different explanation because our brains will happily spin their wheels in the absence of anything of substance to grapple with.

Maybe you disagree, and maybe you have the one true meaning of life. That’s fine, go ahead and tell me what it is, but if you could, please also tell me what objective evidence you have to support your proposed purpose. Also tell me what makes this purpose a property of life — is it shared with spiders and clams and sugar gliders and ants? After all, they live, too.

That reaction aligns nicely with atheist Galen Strawson's response which I mention here:

Quantum Non-Linearity: Galen Strawson on "Why is there something?"

In the foregoing post I quote Strawson telling us that:

I don’t for all that think the universe has a purpose. I think it just is.

... which in turn aligns with Bertrand Russell who said that....

I should say that the universe is just there, and that's all [there is to it!]

So yes, atheists do hit an impenetrable logically contingent barrier (*1) when it comes to the purpose of our highly organized cosmos, if indeed they can even give a coherent meaning to terms like "purpose" when it comes to the cosmos at large. 

But Myers is not at all being unreasonable in asking for objective evidence of anyone who (like myself) has opted for the search for meaning, purpose and the Divine (see Acts 17:23-28). I also agree that we instinctively try to rationalize and make sense of life.  But as I said in a footnote to this post:

Christianity has a strong existential component in its evidences; that is, Christianity is partly dependent on the testimony of personal experiences. This slant toward anecdotal evidence, of course, cannot qualify as being on the same footing as the formal and sharable evidences of our science which depends on an a-priori high organization. (See also here)

But in spite of that I don't think Christian conclusions are as variable, arbitrary and subjective as PZ makes out: I'm sure I've got a lot of common ground with Catholics and even with cultic fundies like Ken Ham (*2). But I doubt I have very much in common with spiders who probably have no where near the minimum intellectual apparatus needed to formulate questions of meaning! Anyway, nice try PZ, but let's both keep searching for the truth and live the moral lives our superegos tell us we should live; at least we have that in common!

Footnote

(*1) And once again, we can write-off conceited blowhard Richard Carrier's attempt to explain order in terms of disorder. (See here for more on disorder)

(*2) However let me acknowledge that a crypto-cultist like Ken is likely to regard my faith as utterly inferior (See here for Ken's opinion of those Christians who don't support the theme of his theme park; to him they are barely Christian!)

Physics' irreducible logical barrier

There's an isomorphism between data compression and the laws of physics: In the physical sciences observation collects "original data".(blue topped cylinder). Because the cosmos is highly organized this allows human theorizers (the "compressor") to describe its patterns of behavior in the form of succinct (or "compressed") mathematical laws (green cylinder).  We can then think of a physical system as a way of "decompressing" those laws and presenting us with our conscious experience of the world (orange topped cylinder). 

The laws of physics are mathematical devices which are effective because we live in a highly organized universe. This organization makes it possible to describe the patterns of the universe in the succinct forms we call the laws of physics. The opposite of this cosmic high organization is disorder or randomness which by definition eludes simple mathematical description. The purely descriptive role of mathematical science has been a big theme of this blog. See here for example.

***

The following post, written by an Eric Hedin on the North American Intelligent Design (NAID) website "Science & Culture", looks to be an important conceptual step (forward?) for the NAID community...

 Can Equations Serve as a Designer Substitute? | Science and Culture Today

Am I interested in this post because it picks up on that same theme of the purely descriptive nature of physical science, although it appears to make no connection between the high organization of our experience of the world and the succinct mathematical formulations with which we find we can describe it. However, quoting from this post (with my emphases).....

This limitation (i,e, the descriptive nature of science) also applies to all the laws of physics that scientists have visualized, discovered, or derived. These “laws” merely describe how things work in this universe, based on our observations and experiments on what already exists.  "Physics is a mathematical exploration of the universe. We look for patterns, structures, symmetries, and relationships. We use math to capture and describe those patterns, structures, symmetries, and relationships." .....For example, Newton’s universal law of gravitation doesn’t cause an apple to fall from a tree, it simply describes the force between it and the Earth and the apple’s subsequent rate of acceleration towards the ground. No statement of the “law of gravity” has any power to produce the actors or the action in this simple drama.....These expostulations regarding the limitations of the utility of the laws of physics may seem obvious,

Yes, I agree, this lesson does seem obvious. The descriptive nature of science became obvious to me as soon as I was introduced to mathematical science...oh, about 55 years ago.  But it is surprising how many people seem unable to see this and believe the laws of physics have some much deeper "causative" role; for some people these laws are the metaphysical "why?" rather than the mere descriptive  "how". But descriptive mathematical science can never "self-explain"; the best it can do is compress its descriptive algorithms in increasingly succinct forms. But ultimately physics is destined to leave us with an incompressible kernel of apparently contingent information. 

If as Hedin appears to understand this hard core of contingency is irreducible this then opens up the question of the ultimate source or the  "why?" behind the cosmos, if indeed "why?" is an intelligible question. Mathematical physics is not self-referencing in way which means it contains its own explanation. In fact as atheist philosophers Bertrand Russell and Galen Strawson said the universe "just is" (*1)..... because human science can only rightly be expected to supply the "how" but not the deeper "why?" Russell and Strawson are telling us we just have to accept what it throws at us as the given status quo. For motivated atheists the question "why?", which if taken as a desire to find purpose and design behind the universe, is not only a meaningless question but also an anathema. 

But does the enigma of the impassible doorway where descriptive  science leaves us imply that a "designer" is to be found on the other side of that door, as Hedin suggests? Design arguments based on observations made in archeological contexts might suggest that via analogy design arguments are the next port of call in our thinking about cosmic origins. But I don't readily agree with the NAIDs who try to make out that the science of intelligent design, which does apply to archeological artifacts (and perhaps even alien technology) can automatically be extrapolated to the total cosmic context with its high organization. The concept of a totalizing God, who is the outer context in which a whole universe lives, moves and has its being (Acts 17:27-28), is an entirely different genus of entity to humans and aliens: The latter beings are intelligences which move & work within the contingent giveness of creation, as did the Greek gods of old. 

People like myself who propose a creator God are doing so on the basis of a design metaphor, rather than via the logic of ID science, a science which can only be worked out for intelligent agencies who work within the cosmic context.  For me what urges the use of this metaphor is an overwhelming sense that there must be anthropic meaning and purpose to be found on the other side of the enigmatic cliff hanger where descriptive science leaves us. Unless we are going to go along with the "just is" atheism of Russel and Strawson purpose and meaning can be found if we use Hebrews 11:6 as an axiomatic epistemic life principle.....

And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. (Hebrews 11:6)

So, I largely agree with what Hedin says here..

To achieve “something rather than nothing” requires more than an equation, more than mathematics — it takes an intelligent mind to imagine what could be and, it would seem, the power of God to bring it to pass.

I can say "Yes" to that because my experience with sophisticated and highly organized configurations in this world does get me thinking along designer lines. But because the concept of "God" is of a totalizing entity in which the observable cosmos is immersed, the ID argument is at best an argument from analogy with a motivation based on largely theological urges & presuppositions and above all the search for purpose and meaning. 

As I discussed in this series of posts there is a feeling even among atheists like R. Carrier that there must be something out there, perhaps something we may find difficult to understand, which is a logical necessity and which is the source of our universe (*1); that source is not going to be descriptive algorithmic physics which inevitably leaves us at a logical hiatus. The status of algorithmic physics is as far as we know contingent; conceivably physics could be something other than what we know (*2). Hence the only way we can arrive at the physics of the universe and nail down the precise nature of its contingency is not through pure logic but through observation. I think this is what Hedin is trying to say here...

Even if an internally consistent theory of “quantum gravity” were developed, its correctness would remain in doubt. The reason is that the universe is contingent — it doesn’t have to play by our suppositions, and the only way to know for certain if any theory or model of nature is valid is to see if nature behaves according to its predictions.

Yes, I agree. But the "just is" atheism of Russel and Strawson, may regard it as futile, if not meaningless to pursue further explanatory aims that seek to answer "why?". It is ironic, however, that for the Christian Hebrews 11:6 suggests a similar "just is" attitude toward the reality of God himself. But in contrast to "just is" atheism (*3) Christian theology does help address the human yearning for ultimate justice, purpose and meaning and also helps fill that "God shaped hole" in our psyche. 

Footnotes

*1 At least Russel and Strawson are being coherent here. Compare that with Richard Carrier's absurd argument employing a bogus concept of probability as a kind logical truism capable of creating a universe. 

*2 Anthropic ideas, however, suggest that only a limited range of cosmic conditions favour a form of life advanced enough to make observations on the cosmos. 

*3 See also Brian Cox on the cosmic perspective.

Motivated Atheism

Motivated atheism: "We don't want none of that God business here, thankyou very much!"

                From: Viewpoint: What 'New Atheists’ get wrong about science and religion - Genetic Literacy Project

Does Humanity Need a God Who Doesn’t Exist? asks fundamentalist theme park supremo Ken Ham in a blog post dated December 2025. After posing the question Ken goes on to say....

KEN: Is God just (Note the "Just" here) an evolutionary necessity? I was recently sent an article titled “The God Construct: Why Humanity Needed God Though God Need Not Exist.”  The abstract of this “atheistic, scientific-philosophical perspective” applied to the idea of God says:

This article argues that humanity created the concept of God to address deep psychological and social needs, even though no empirical evidence requires a God’s existence. Drawing on the philosophy of religion and cognitive science, we demonstrate that belief in gods arises from evolved cognitive byproducts (e.g., hyperactive agency detection and theory of mind) and existential motives (such as meaning, order, and comfort in the face of death and suffering). From an atheistic, scientific-philosophical perspective, we contend that God is a cultural construct (‘man needs God’) rather than a necessary metaphysical being. Logical analysis (e.g. the problem of evil (But see here) and ontological arguments) supports God’s non-necessity, while empirically humans with strong God-belief report greater purpose and reduced death anxiety (Cranney 2013). We argue that religion fulfilled survival functions (community cohesion, moral regulation) but did so via God-concepts as symbolic projections. In sum, the God-idea met human needs, not vice versa. This thesis is supported by interdisciplinary evidence from evolutionary psychology, anthropology, and analytic philosophy. [emphases added]

MY COMMENT: Ironically I don't necessarily disagree with much of that abstract! If for the moment I put on my evolutionary hat (which I don't wear all the time) then I can accept that humans have evolved in such a way that their cognitive, temperamental and emotional needs precipitated an existential crisis which motivated a search for meaning & purpose and ultimately led to the construction of concepts of divinity in various forms; hence the jargon "cultural construct". I would also accept that as far as limited human understanding is concerned God has no known logical necessity. But what about "empirical necessity"? - more on that subject in a bit.

But, and here is the big "but", an evolutionary account explaining the human need for the divine can be taken as empirical evidence which is readily incorporated into a theistic world view. Viz: From the theistic evolutionists world view it is easy to claim that the evolution of the "God shaped hole", a void which humanity seeks to fill, is God's way of revealing himself to the evolved world.  In short, yes, the divine is a cultural construct, but is it only a cultural construct? (See Romans 2:14ff for more)

Ironically, the thesis in the above abstract may not actually be that popular among some motivated atheists. Why? Well, its tantamount to admitting that theism is not some random human foible of relatively recent social origin but a deeply ingrained human trait inextricably intertwined with evolution; a product of an emerging conscious cognition capable of self-awareness, self reflection and in need of existentialist assurance.

***

I wonder if the author of the abstract really understands empiricism and the role of evidence? All evidence is subject to interpretation (*1); it is just that some of the simpler and very accessible ontologies (like Hooke's law and chemical precipitates) provide us with prolific empirical evidences at will; the high organization of this empirical data then allows us to incorporate natural information in succinct laws.  

As we move from elementary ontologies to more complex and  less accessible ontologies, such as human beings themselves, their societies and their histories, and their cosmogonies etc. the vexed question of how to interpret sparse and less accessible data comes very much to the fore. And if that is true of commonplace objects (albeit objects which are very complex and of greater epistemic distance) then we would expect it to be even more true, if it exists, of the Transcendent.  I discuss this more fully elsewhere: See here for example. Compounding the problem is that evidences for God are often found in private experiences and epiphanies that are not easily shared. 

God's apparent lack of logical necessity is true as far as we are concerned but this may be down to a perspective effect of finite cognition and epistemic limitations. These limitations prevent us  from wrapping our minds around a full understanding of God thus thwarting human attempts to appreciate his logical necessity. When it comes to ultimate origins this problem even surfaces in atheism....

In my series on conceited blowhard Richard Carrier we found even him accepting that beyond what appears to us as the unnecessary contingency of our own cosmos there are logical truths out there which cannot be done away with. Therefore he argued that the cosmos didn't come from nothing; at the very least certain logical truths hold eternally, although he at first left open exactly what those logical truths are. But he then went on to erroneously use probability theory as if it were one of those logical truisms, thus allowing him to generate universes at random. But while his identification of what is logically true was in error, the idea that the universe is created and upheld by some underlying logical truism is not out of the way.... although I would regard attempts like Anselm's ontological argument and the first cause argument as weak and even invalid proofs of God's existence... but I have great sympathy with the underlying motivation to get at the logical truisms behind the cosmos. 

****

Now let's see how Ken reacts...

KEN: In other words, there’s no convincing evidence that God exists; but we needed him, so sometime in our evolutionary past, mankind invented a God or gods to serve our purposes. But do you realize that, in making his argument, this atheistic author has already defeated his very premise? Okay, what do I mean by that?

Well, he admits his research comes from an atheistic perspective: He believes everything is material and everything evolved by materialistic (non-supernatural) processes over many millions of years. In this worldview, there cannot be anything immaterial. And yet he is applying logic and reason to make his arguments. But logic and reason are not material! They are immaterial . . . and the immaterial can’t exist in his own worldview. (emphases added)

MY COMMENT: It is simply not clear to me what is meant here by materialism and materialistic processes.  In my view such notions are incoherent and it is likely they have their origins in the bogus God vs natural forces dichotomy; they are crypto-deist categories. I've argued against this sham paradigm many times in connection with the North America Intelligent Design (NAID) community (See here). It is no surprise to see that Ken has been influenced by this error. 

Material objects, so called, exist because the high organization of our sense data allows us to mathematically and logically define material objects such as stars, planets, people, minds, computers, atoms, and fundamental particles etc. geometrically; "materialism" does not make sense without the use of mathematics and logic. Beyond those mathematical constructions we are hard put to it to identify the true nature of the thing-in-itself which supports the high organization of our experience. For Christians of course that thing-in-itself is, whatever its ontological nature, created and sustained by God. 

Because of Ken's undefined use of the term "material", Ken's statement that  logic and reason are not material! They are immaterial . . . and the immaterial can’t exist in his own worldview is unintelligible. It is the very organization of the creation which facilitates our notion of logic. Ergo, an atheist too can appreciate logic and reason although atheism would not, of course, attribute the origin of that organization to a rational creator God. For example the atheist  Galen Strawson (who has no idea where it all came from), as a last resort throws up his hands and declares that the organized cosmos "just is". Well, Christians (such as myself) can't really complain too strongly about that because for us God himself "just is" as per Hebrews 11:6. 

In the above quote from Ken, we find him, as is his wont, yet again putting his own ideas into the mouths and minds of an antagonist - a bad habit of his whether his antagonist is a Christian or atheist. (See here and here for example).

***

KEN: In a chance, random universe, laws of logic that apply to everyone everywhere don’t make sense. Why would randomness produce immaterial laws that don’t change? In order to make his argument, this atheist has to borrow from a biblical worldview because it is only the eternal God of the Bible, who is logically consistent, never changes, and can account for laws of logic. He is borrowing from the very worldview (or theism, at least) that he is arguing against! The very fact that he can argue at all shows he is wrong.

MY COMMENT: Defining randomness is itself quite a challenge in logic; randomness certainly doesn't do away with logic; in fact it needs logic to be understood. But I think I get what Ken is trying to say here: Randomness is the antithesis of the high organisation which facilitates the enunciation of those very successful laws of nature. If that's what Ken really means then its true those laws make the natural world an intelligible place and make logic possible. But beyond those descriptive laws the deeper logical reason for the cosmos remains an enigma, not withstanding Richard Carrier's botched philosophy of probability. As Galen Strawson appears to acknowledge that's where atheism's questions hit an impenetrable barrier.

I'd accept what Ken is trying say in as much Christianity has played a role in helping us to have confidence in the stability, organisation, rationality and consequent knowability of the cosmos. This is the a priori epistemic feature which motivates science. 

***

KEN:  We didn’t invent God. God exists outside of time and space. He created us by the power of his word and then revealed himself to us through his perfect Word and his Son, Jesus Christ, who came to offer his own life in our place so we could be forgiven and spend eternity with him.

MY COMMENT:  I can run with the gist of that Ken, even though you would likely classify me as a pagan. (I'm generally much more generous to cultists than they have any hope of reciprocating that generosity) However, if evolution made the invention of God an existential necessity for searching, seeking humankind it's an invention that not only worked but has revealed The Big Secret behind the universe. 

*** 

KEN: And don’t forget, man can’t escape the fact that “that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, both His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse” (Romans 1:19–20 LSB).

MY COMMENT:  Well Ken, if I temporarily put my evolutionary hat on, it could be plausibly maintained that the writer of the paper, in a back handed way, concedes one point; namely that that which is known about God is evident within them......etc., but he is proposing that this knowledge has emerged evolutionarily. Of course Ken doesn't believe in evolution but for Christians who are evolutionists this paper can be seen as an acknowledgement that humanity's innate awareness of the numinous comes from deep rooted whisperings within. 

But not everyone responds positively to those whisperings: For one thing is clear however, and Ken may well agree, the writer of this paper is likely to be highly motivated toward atheism; that is, he wants atheism to be true and thus he casts around for arguments which fit this a priori belief; much like Ken does for his a priori beliefs!

Footnote

*1 The view I express here is similar to but is certainly not the same as Ken's bigoted presuppositionalism. Human beings most often work abductively, trying to fit the evidence to some a priori world view which (hopefully) successfully interprets that evidence. But unlike Ken's quasi-cult artistry which motivates him to threaten all but damnation on antagonists, our world views should not be regarded as immutable; if a world view struggles to make sense of the cosmos (such as YEC, flat earth theory, conspiracy theories etc.) then it must be abandoned and a new world view developed. Contrast that with the absurdities of YEC fundamentalism which according to Ken must be held onto on pain of all but excommunication from the faith.

The Cosmological Argument

But perhaps the ultimate cause mentioned here

 is another universe?

The weak point in this argument is the "must be God" assertion
which no doubt could be challenged.

As I said at the beginning of this post I've never been very convinced by  some of the traditional arguments for God's existence. In this connection my friend James Knight posted this blog on the Cosmological Argument. In commenting on his post I explained briefly to James why I have a reserved opinion on the Cosmological Argument....

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I suppose it started in the 1970s when I became enamoured of idea that the best we can do in science is describe the patterns of the world. In particular I focused on the subject of randomness as a particular form of pattern that was difficult if not impossible to describe algorithmically. Causation, then, becomes a problematic notion with randomness. As the Cosmological argument makes use of the notion of causation this argument loses it's intelligibility somewhat.

That's not to say that the Cosmological Argument does not express something deeply intuitively true and compelling

***

The above explains why I was so obsessed with randomness at an early stage and why I was so determined to crack the question of randomness. (I'm sure professional mathematicians have done a better job, but my PDF on the subject was good enough for my purposes) 

If we are intellectually looking for God it is ironic that blowhard atheist Richard Carrier should identify the area where to start looking; namely, that God is the mysterious logical necessity left when one subtracts out all apparently contingent things. Richard wrongly identifies his logical necessity as probability and randomness. In doing so he appears to misunderstand the ontology of probability.

And while I'm here let me say that I am also unimpressed with Anselm's ontological argument for the necessary existence of God. But I concede that if God is that mysterious logical necessity which Richard Carrier identifies then in that sense the ontology of God makes His existence a necessity. But I suspect that for finite beings like ourselves the true ontological argument for God involves infinities and is likely to be beyond our understanding. However, there is nothing wrong in trying to develop an ontological argument; you never know what you might come up with.

For me God is the kind of explanation one uses abductively; that is, it is the best explanation I can think of which makes human sense of an otherwise senseless cosmos. It gives us the "why"* (rather than the mere scientific descriptive "how") of those astonishing empirical features of our cosmos such as its high organisation, the human compulsion for meaning, purpose & justice and the existence of conscious cognition as the cornerstone of both empirical science and morality. Theism is the crucial intellectual component of a worldview which makes rational sense of our scientific observations on a cosmos which otherwise is entirely absurd. In the beginning God.... (See also Hebrews 11:6ff)

Footnote

* The kind of "Why?" I'm thinking of here only makes sense in a context where sentience is an a priori feature. 

The Aumann's agreement theorem paradox.

Different perspectives implies a likelihood of different experience
sets and conflicting probability estimates, therefore setting 
 the scene for potential disagreement. 

I was rather intrigued by James Knight's use of Aumann's agreement theorem in a blog post of his that can be found here:

The Philosophical Muser: Why Christians Disagree So Much

James' post was a response to a challenge put to him that If Christianity is true, why are there such a varied set of Christians who disagree and squabble about so much? Towards the end of his article we read this (My emphases)....

Given the state of humanity, I’d no more expect Christians to agree on everything than I would mathematicians to agree about politics, or opera singers to agree about economics. But, I do wish they would – and as I often argue – Christians SHOULD agree more, especially on objective things – and two Christians of any sex, ethnicity, denomination, should converge on more and more consensus if they were to sit by the fire, Aumann’s Agreement-style, and honestly, rigorously seek the truth together, like people who care about what is true."

The exact "science" of Mathematics is a domain of knowledge incommensurable with politics and economics and no easy like-for-like comparison can be made. Mathematics is an activity, in fact a form of model building, which depends on very strictly agreed symbolic conventions and algorithmic procedures being followed. If in mathematics every one keeps strictly to the same conventions and procedures disagreement can't arise. The progress of mathematics bares this out; I'm not aware that mathematicians frequently and fundamentally disagree (except perhaps about un-proven conjectures). This of course is not so of politico-economics; disagreements about best economic policy and its political implementation abound. This why economics is a breeding ground for politicians and their political passions & power seeking; after all the only way to implement a particular contentious economic policy is to get political power (Hopefully by democratic means). But let's not think any better of those sanguine mathematicians over and against those battling politico-economists - the latter are dealing with very complex and epistemically tricky material which as we will see provides one reason among others why politico-economics breaks the assumptions of Aumann's agreement theorem and promotes the sharp divisions of power politics.....and that's before we consider those ever present very human psycho-sociological factors which one expects of complex adaptive systems like human beings. 

In fact I would rewrite the first sentence of the above quote as follows....

Given the natural state of human affairs, I’d no more expect Christians to agree on everything than I would politicians to agree about politics, or economists to agree about economics. 

***

Aumann's agreement theorem assumes we have a set of interlocutors who start with a common information base ("common priors") but then these interlocutors bring to the discussion table differing levels of knowledge in the form of conditional probabilities that all interlocutor believe to be a trustworthy contribution to the discussion (So-called "common knowledge" as opposed to "common information"). The interlocutors update their probabilities by mutual cooperative sharing of their differing conditional probabilities (*1).  They assume one another to be rational honest agents and that they can trust one another's probability estimates as they share them. According to the agreement theorem they will eventually converge on the same information set. See the following link for more on the agreement theorem: Aumann Agreement - LessWrong

Before I go any further let's get one thing straight. Most common sense people (which includes myself and people who believe there is such a thing as a single truth out there which stands over and above the slippery slopes of cultural relativism and critical theory) have an intuitive grasp of Aumann's theorem; that is, they understand that in an epistemically transparent world where evidence acquisition is not an issue and interlocutors are rational and honest, then agreement  about truth will inevitably emerge. So the agreement theorem proves what most common sense people already believe (Of course critical theorists and cultural relativists are likely to make heavy weather of this common sense truth). Aumann's theorem is a nice confirmation of what all reasonable people already know intuitively. But the article on Aumann's theorem that I have linked to above ends with this warning: 

The fact that disagreements on questions of simple fact are so common amongst humans, and that people seem to think this is normal, is an observation that should strike fear into the heart of every aspiring rationalist.

So, given the agreement theorem which is undoubtedly mathematically correct why is disagreement between humans so widespread? In this connection I made the following comment on James' blog entry. As a rule my comments never get past the Philosophical Muser's approval process and are therefore cancelled (The Philosophical Muser's concept of "free-speech" is qualified) So, rather than let my comments disappear into oblivion I thought this matter to be so important that it needs airing. What follows in the next section is based on the comment I added to James' post...

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I think I agree with the general drift of your argument here but not in one or two of the details; especially, may I say,  you are missing the crucial point of the agreement theorem and vastly underestimating the epistemic issues impacting attempts to get agreement.

That cozy fireside talk seldom, if ever, arises. For a start whilst our interlocutors are locked in by the fireside they are not updating their experience or accumulating any further experience. They have to try and get agreement on the basis of the information they already have (in the form of priors and conditional probabilities). If this pool of information contains contradictions and they insist on sticking to their scripts they won’t necessarily reach full agreement even if they are rational.

Therefore our interlocutors are going to have to get off their backsides, get out on their bikes and find a set of consistent priors and conditionals. But that brings us to the main problem: This information can only come from statistics which result of a wide and long term experience of the cosmos. Moreover, any mature engagement with that cosmos requires thousands if not millions of bits of information. Single interlocutors, therefore can’t survey the whole lot; ergo, their experience is liable to being skewed and/or very partial. So, unfortunately our interlocutors, on top of all their other very human survivalist social traits, have to face the epistemic problem of systematic and random sampling errors.

The agreement theorem simply sets a lower limit on agreement time. That is:

Agreement time >= Aumann agreement time:

 

As I found out with my own AI Thinknet project AI systems also suffer from similar epistemic problems relating to sampling bias and partiality. After all, I think the YEC organization AiG have implemented their own YEC AI interlocutor presumably by training it with a bias on YEC texts.

As I’ve said before because of these fundamental epistemic limitations tribal identification & group think where one outsources epistemic help to the experience of a large group of minds is an adaptive trait and this factor shouldn’t be underestimated in terms of its potential epistemic utility. So what James refers to as “incentives, needs and agendas” have the potential to be adaptive whether we like it or not.

So, even without factoring in those many awkward human social foibles (which potentially have adaptive value), epistemic challenges alone are very likely to lead to agreement failure. My guess is that disagreement due to epistemic issues is the biggest factor in disagreement. The only antidote I see for this is epistemic humility. But the trouble with this is that when faced with utterly convinced  group-think such as we find in AiG & Trumpite brands of Christianity epistemic humility & tentativeness is read as weakness. Hence, a certain amount of vehemence is demanded in the heat of argument.

***

Olber's paradox was a famous theorem in astrophysics. This paradox shows that under plausible assumptions the night sky should not be black but a continuum of bright star light; the fact that this isn't the case pointed to the need to revisit the underlying assumptions; it was a profound piece of theoretical thinking which lead the way to our understanding of an expanding universe. I contend that likewise Aumann's theorem  prompts us to think a bit deeper as to why it's not a real world model; in particular it urges us to think about both our epistemological limitations and the complexities of socio-psychology which strongly influence the acquisition of knowledge. With respect to the latter we are prompted to investigate the adaptive value of group think & group belonging along with its potential downsides and tradeoffs. Because Aumann and his successors are making us think harder about human affairs then like Olber's paradox its pedological value can't be underestimated.

The upside of group think is that it widens the number of experiencing agents contributing to the conversation and this increases the amount of incoming evidence. It's true, however, that the instincts behind group think have a big potential downside as group-think can lock in error such as we see among cultists and fundamentalists who exploit the adaptive instincts; in this context the survival of the group identity takes precedence over further evidential updates. Aumann's theorem prompts us to study the cost/benefit balance entailed by joining an epistemic group with a strong sense of cohesion and collective identity. In this sense Aumann's paradox is as profound as Olber's paradox. 

***

I would want to rewrite the second half of the quote at the beginning of this post which I took from Philosophical Muser along these lines....

Christians are expected to make heavy weather of agreement, even about on objective things – and two Christians of any sex, ethnicity, denomination will not necessarily converge to a consensus if they were to sit by the fire, Aumann’s Agreement-style attempting to get convergence; disagreement is likely even if they honestly, rigorously and rationally seek the truth together, like people who care about what is true."

The Agreement theorem tells us that in principle agreement is possible if we get our priors and evidences right, but therein lies the epistemic challenge of gathering huge amounts of data some of which may present accessibility problems; this epistemic challenge necessitates that the quest for knowledge becomes a social symposium and this cues in all the foibles of the sociological dynamic. That these human and epistemic factors can make agreement problematical should always be at the back of our minds and therefore our difficulty in conforming to Aumann's theorem SHOULD be the basis of an attitude of epistemic humility rather than thinking that Aumann's theorem underwrites an attitude of epistemic arrogance; in my books this classifies as an abuse of the theorem. Agreeing to disagree until more information comes to light should not make us shudder.

But let me repeat and finish with this warning..... 

The only antidote I see for inevitable disagreement is epistemic humility. But the trouble with this is that when faced with convinced group-think such as we find in AiG & Trumpite brands of Christianity, humility is read as weakness. Hence, a certain amount of vehemence is demanded in the heat of argument.

Disagreement, sharp disagreement in fact, seems to be the natural state of human affairs.

Footnotes

*1 A conditional probability has the form "The probability of A given evidence B is P"; formally expressed as P(A/B). Here B is the evidence relevant to the truth of A. 

Examining Mr. R. Carrier's use of Bayesianism. Part IV

A gross theological caricature

(See here for Part I, Part II and Part III)

In part IV of this series, I'm continuing to comment on the following post by a Mr. Richard Carrier:

Why the Fine Tuning Argument Proves God Does Not Exist • Richard Carrier Blogs 

As Richard stares out at our strange cosmos and considers the question of theism and whether or not a cosmos like our's would have been produced by the kind of God conceived by most theists, this is what he thinks:

It cannot be predicted that this [Universe] is what a God would produce, or that it is what he would want to produce. Whereas it is exactly 100% predicted to be what we’d see if there was no God

I would certainly question Richard's second sentence here: What kind of universe/cosmos would I have predicted if there was no God? As we saw in the previous parts I certainly wouldn't have predicted our own remarkable universe in all its organized complexity, it's surprising organized contingencies and above all an organization which gives it a very strong propensity to generate life....... especially that propensity to generate complex organic objects! After all, only in recent history have humans started to master systems capable of generating other systems.  Why wouldn't I have predicted all this in the absence of God? .... because the evidence of our experience is that organization of all types, both simple and complex, are associated with the activity of human (and animal) intelligence. Therefore, when I see a cosmos so organized that we can distill out of it those highly succinct mathematical laws of physics, laws which are crucial for the generation & maintenance of life, my intuitions turn to thoughts of an a priori intelligence being active. Moreover, the fact is that the laws we distill from cosmic organization can never have the property of Aseity (that is of self-explanation). This is because these laws are mathematically descriptive devices destined to always leave us with a hard core of irreducible, incompressible and enigmatic contingent information; those laws are therefore logically incapable of delivering the logical necessity of Aseity. Some atheists at least do understand this. Take for example atheists Galen Strawson and Sean Carroll: Both appear to understand that all probing human inquiry into the form and pattern of the cosmos must eventually bottom out with unexplainable brute fact: Aseity is beyond the reach of conventional descriptive science.  This is a mathematical truism. See the following links for more details...

Quantum Non-Linearity: Galen Strawson on "Why is there something?" (quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com)

Quantum Non-Linearity: Something comes from Something: Nothing comes from Nothing. Big Deal (quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com)

There have been some who have tried to get round all this by suggesting that somehow quantum mechanics can be used to redefine nothing in such a way that it tells us how it is possible to get something from nothing: But this line of thought is achieved by mere empty linguistic tricks: One can use the same tricks to claim that this simply amounts to a redefinition of something! (See footnote *2)

***

And yet I'm inclined to agree with Richard's first sentence in the quote above:  I don't think I could have predicted that the kind of God I think I know would have created the specifics of our universe, not only because of its strange impersonal and dispassionate vastness but also because of the much closer to home, well aired and time-honored conundrums around suffering and evil. Yes, I might have predicted a highly organized universe, but organization covers a multitude of possibilities, and it seems a multitude of sins. So, I do have some sympathy with honest atheists on this point. (But types like Richard don't want sympathy & measured opinions; they want abject submission to their thinking; his attitudes match those of the hardened fundamentalists of Biblical literalism).

Moreover, based on our experience of intelligent activity in this world (which by & large is human and animal) we have to admit that not only does intelligent activity have an immense space of creative options open to it making anticipation of specific activity in the absence of evidence all but impossible, but also that intelligent activity has a fair measure of inscrutability. For example, the ancient stone circles we see dotted around Europe entail a high level of organization both in their configuration and the logistics of their construction and yet as to their purpose we have to resort to hypothesis and speculation. Furthermore, coming from a vacuum of evidence I could not have predicted from first principles that early cultures (probably as a consequence of that time honoured search for cosmic meaning & purpose) would build stone circles. Because of the huge variety open to intelligent behavior I can't move from an evidential vacuum to stone circles. But the reverse is possible: Given the evidence of stone circles I can link that to known aspects of the human psyche, a psyche I share. This means we have at least some inkling of the motives driving the human organization of inanimate objects and therefore have a chance of interpreting the meaning of this activity; in this case that the stone circles probably represent a culture's attempt to engage with the numinous and seek to give shape, meaning, and purpose to the universe; I personally think I understand that mystical endeavor. 

Likewise, as we look out onto the cosmos itself, we observe high levels of organization in a pattern we couldn't predict even if we knew beforehand that a creating deity was behind it. But conversely, if we are sufficiently primed theists, we at least stand a chance of getting a purchase on cosmic purposes via theological hypothesis and speculation. But if we reject God's attempt at self-revelation and we reject the necessity of the epistemic bootstrap of faith (See Hebrews 11:3&6), we will remain as much in the dark about Divine purposes as we are about those enigmatic stone circles. For it is possible in my view to come up with at least a hypothesized framework as to the meaning of the cosmos. 

***

But now I ask myself this: What would I have predicted if there is no God of any sort? My first intuitive response to that question would be absolute empty nothingness; but this is patently not the case: Our conscious perceptions tell us that the universe exists and therefore we do have an evidential handle on this question. In fact, as I said in Part III of this series, if the evidence was that the universe is completely random (That is, a Big-R superverse), I would interpret that as evidence of the absence of the God I think I know. As Sherlock Holmes observed in the story of The Cardboard Box where he was commenting on a particularly tragic case of crime...

“What is the meaning of it, Watson?” said Holmes, solemnly, as he laid down the paper. “What object is served by this circle of misery and violence and fear? It must tend to some end, or else our universe is ruled by chance, which is unthinkable. But to what end? There is the great standing perennial problem to which human reason is as far from an answer as ever.”

(See the introduction to my book on Disorder and Randomness where I first used this quote)

But whilst I'd agree that our intuitions suggest that Big-R points to atheism, the reverse isn't true: Viz: Given atheism I wouldn't have been able to predict a Big-R universe: The consequences of the absence of God are just as inscrutable as God himself. In any case a prediction of Big-R isn't a straightforward deduction from the absence of God. Let me explain...

Firstly, in a Big-R universe I wouldn't exist to perceive anything and neither would anyone else. Being an idealist where I regard conscious cognition and perception as an important underwriter of reality, I would therefore question the coherence and intelligibility of Big-R notions.

Secondly, randomness represents the very opposite of a logical truism; A logical truism, once understood, has zero surprisal value and therefore no information, whereas randomness has maximum surprisal value and maximum information. If you are looking for the logical necessity of explanatory completeness or aseity you won't find it in randomness. The existence of randomness entails maximum contingency and maximum mystery. It is first and foremost the very opposite of a logical truism, the very opposite of "necessity".  It therefore explains nothing in the sense of explanatory completeness; rather it just leaves us with a conundrum as to who or what is managing to generate the most complex pattern of all, a pattern that requires a maximum of computational effort. 

***

In the following quote we find Richard continuing to dig even deeper into the hole he is already in....

RICHARD: Thus, Fine Tuning is not a “peculiar” thing for us to observe. It is not distinctive of God-made universes; it is, rather, distinctive of godless universes. It is literally the only thing we could ever observe—unless God existed and made the universe. Because only then could the universe possibly have been made conducive to life without the Fine Tuning of our peculiar fundamental constants. Hence God-made worlds will tend to not be Fine Tuned.

MY COMMENT:  As we saw in Part III, so-called "fine tuning" is just a small facet of a much bigger story of a remarkable order which has facilitated the human project of distilling out of the pattern of that order some remarkably elegant mathematical forms which from my standpoint have a very divine feel about them. They look to be the very epitome of an incredibly intelligent design. And let me repeat, further "explanation" of these forms can never deliver aseity but could only ever be a further enhancement of the succinctness of their form; but increasing mathematical succinctness can't go on until one has nothing left to compress; an incompressible kernel of contingency will always remain using mathematics as we know it. 

***

Richard Carrier has a very low view of our Cosmos. In spite of its exceptional and highly stable order, an order strongly conducive to the emergence and maintenance of life Richard still courts the Big-R hypothesis, the random bizarro universe that can be used to explain away anything. Take a look at the following...

RICHARD: This is a crucial realization. Fine Tuning of our observed fundamental constants is only necessary when a God is not doing the designing; it is only necessary when observers only evolve through billions of years of gradual cellular scaffolding, and life at all arises only by chance chemical mixing, and only after billions of years of the meandering random mixing of chemicals across a vast universe billions of light-years in size filled with random lifeless junk, which is almost everywhere lethal to life, and only hospitable to it in tiny specks of the chance arrangement of randomly mixed conditions. Only those conditions require Fine Tuning. Quite simply put: only Godless universes have to be Finely Tuned.

Which means when you observe a universe like ours (old, huge, deadly, and producing life only in the most awkward of ways and rarest of places), you can expect it to have been Finely Tuned by chance accident, not intelligent design. Intelligent design would more likely make a universe as large and old as needed to contain the life it was made for, and would create life directly (not employ billions of years of cellular scaffolding), and imbue the world with only those laws of physics needed to maintain it to its purpose (no weird fundamental constants, no weird fundamental particles). It would not produce a universe almost entirely hostile to life. There would be no lethal radiation-filled vacuum. No dead worlds or lifeless moons. Stars would not be uninhabitable monstrosities. Black holes would never exist.

MY COMMENT: And again: Chance fine tuning is a very bad argument for atheism; it neglects that the values of the "fine-tuned" variables only make sense in the context of the highly organizing effect of a set of remarkable laws and which together with those laws constitute pre-conditions which considerably enhances the chance of life. As I've said above, because of the huge space of possibilities open to intelligence and on top of that intelligence's inscrutability it is difficult to anticipate in advance what intelligence will do. But the reverse is an easier path. Given the works of intelligence we, as intelligences ourselves, can work backwards with a chance of interpreting the purpose of its works. To my mind all those dead worlds are the evidence of a search, reject and select computation, a declarative procedure that may well use teleological constraints.

The emphasis on fine tuning in Richard's quote above completely misses the plot; namely, that what is actually being fine-tuned is a remarkable cosmic computation machine of immense dimensions. And yet according to Richard's theology God simply doesn't do things like this; instead, God does things without logic and without sequence; it is ironic that Biblical literalists often think in a very similar way. But contrary to this kind of thinking is the evidence of our experience of the way intelligence works: Viz: It works using an experimental search, reject and select activity; the cosmos appears to be a tableau of intelligent activity, a tableau of creative activity.

And while I'm here a note to self: Here's a speculation for me to think about. The fine-tuning constants could have many, many non-zero decimal places after the decimal point. Therefore, if ordinary parallel processing rather than expanding parallelism is the search space method being used to develop the cosmos, the fine-tuning constants could be a sneaky way of feeding information, a priori, into cosmic evolution, thereby speeding the search up. 

***

Epilogue

In Part III I introduced the idea that the cosmos can be thought of as a fantastically large computation, a computation which is expressible in a very abstracted form as an equation relating the information content of the created configuration to a function of two variables: 1) The starting information and 2) the minimum possible number of computational steps. This equation looks something like this: 

I = S + Log T

Equation 1

Where I is the information content of the configuration created, and S is the minimum length of the algorithm needed to generate the configuration using a minimum number of execution steps of T. See here where I give more details on this relation.  (See also here). For a parallel computation the time taken for the computation will be proportional to T, but if as I feel is entirely plausible for our universe expanding parallelism is somehow being employed, the computation is achieved much faster. 

As we saw in Part III according to the theology of Richard Carrier, God, if he existed, would just do stuff abracadabra style; that is Richard takes it for granted that T ~ 0 and that creation has no sequential duration; in his theology God just does his stuff by downloading reified brute fact via his mighty magic commands. As we saw this is also the theology of the Biblical literalists (See footnote *1 below for the theology of the North American ID community). 

***

As I have said so often; there is a sense in which the elegant & succinct mathematical forms distilled from the high organisation of the cosmos "explain" absolutely nothing in the deepest sense of the word. Explanatory mathematical objects as we know them are less an act of explanation than that of compressed descriptions; as such they can never break the explanatory completeness barrier and deliver aseity. 

Our world is just one of the possible worlds that can be reified from the platonic realm. This fact is going to be hard to take for those who hanker after the secular notion that somehow the so-called material world can be so closed ended that it delivers an aseity of its own. Rather, it is just one of many possibilities that can be dragged out of the platonic world, reified and because of its organization, described with succinct "distilled" mathematical forms. It is in fact a work of art rather than a work of necessity; there is good art and bad art, but all is art, and art is but realized possibility. Our science gives us the pattern of the creation but not its fundamental origins; as many people have put it; the objects of science give us the "how" but not the "why?". But "why?" is only intelligible as a question in the context of an assumed a-priori sentience; in the context of this assumed conscious cognition the concepts of intention, goal and purpose have meaning. So, is our ravenous curiosity going to be satiated with answers that merely tell us about the "How"?  For some people at least that does seem to be the case. 

As we try to make sense of the cosmos we use a combination of induction, abduction and deduction: The generalizations of induction sometimes help prompt the production of theories but perhaps more often a theory is abducted with a giant intuitive leap of inspiration. Crucially, however, a theory arrived at by inspiration must then be tested via the predictions of deduction. This testing methodology has grown up around the relatively simple conceptual objects which control the physical regime, but it is a methodology that is far less effective when dealing with the inscrutabilities & complexities of the personal, the psychological, the sociological and above all the liminal world of the numinous. These phenomena are far too complex, erratic and full of exceptions to easily admit formal methods. The numinous in particular is the domain of anecdotal evidence, the domain of personal revelation. 

***

The evidence of our senses is that our cosmos is highly organized, and that this unique organization is such that it facilitates those descriptive conceptual devices and tokens we call the laws of physics which ride on top of and can be intellectually distilled from this order. That this order is being created and maintained everywhere and everywhen by an a priori intelligence is not an implausible proposition for many of us, even if for some it seems too large an epistemic step to make.  But I'll concede that it is not a proposition that can be formally tested like the relatively simple physical regime can be tested; testing such a complex entity is more akin to testing the partially veiled and complex world of sociology and human thought. So, although individuals may feel they have tested their faith anecdotally the anecdotes they tell won't convince everyone, least of all the evangelical atheists. But we do have this: Theism has the potential to at least make sense of the cosmos in terms of purpose and meaning whereas vanilla science, which only tells us the "how", cannot do this.  Moreover, as an idealist I would contend, that the reality of the particulate cosmos is unintelligible unless one first posits an a-priori up and running conscious cognition. Particulate matter only makes sense as the mathematical constructions of a conscious, thinking & perceiving sentience. For me Hebrews 11:3&6 is a necessary first principle of epistemology.

But of course, I can't expect an evangelical atheist like Richard to agree with any of this as it is very much dependent on personal anecdote rather than formal observational protocols. All I can advise is that people like Richard will just have to get out on their bikes and find some anecdotes of their own. As far as I'm concerned, all bets are still on!

***

Depending on how I feel I might complete this series by looking at Richard's tongue in cheek theology which he expresses in the picture that heads this post. Viz: God needs blood to fix the universe, but only his blood has enough magical power to do it, so he gave himself a body and then killed it. I wonder where Richard got his grist to come up with that one? I just wonder. The guilty parties probably know who they are.

Footnotes

*1 On North American Intelligent Design (NAID): Although I'm fundamentally an Intelligent Creation person I must once again disown any intellectual sympathy with this community, especially so as they fall into the welcoming embrace of the far-right, merging Christianity with politics. 

I personally don't have any intellectual commitment to the engine driving evolutionary change as currently conceived and yet I would heavily criticize the line taken by the NAID community: They have entrenched themselves in a tribal culture which is married to a set of misleading conceptual cliches: Viz: anti-evolutionism, "blind natural forces", anti-junk-DNA, "chance vs necessity" and subliminal deism. (See here for more). The NAID community make a sharp distinction between so-called "blind natural forces" and intelligent activity. The consequence is that they have adopted an epistemic filter which makes hard going of the identification of the basics of the physical regime as a work of hyper-intelligence; thus, in a sense chiming with Richard Carrier's view that the physical regime is a product of mindless blind Kaos; how utterly ironic!

If we assume that the cosmos is created and maintained everywhere and everywhen by the Divine will, then immediately the NAID category of "blind natural forces" becomes problematical. This is because in the context of intelligent creationism those forces can hardly be classified as blind and natural; in fact, the cosmos as the reification of artistic possibility rather than of necessity is highly unnatural. Although the NAID community are by and large like myself old cosmos creationists they nevertheless have subliminally taken on board the category of God as a super-duper conjurer creating stuff instantaneously as fully formed configurations, stuff that just springs into existence like a rabbit out of a hat. If this statement of their views is caricatured and unfair they had better tell me why it is. 

The particularly North American notion of God as a magician appears to be associated with the view that somehow the T term in equation 1 classifies as a "natural force" and therefore we must have T ~ 0. For them admitting T >> 0 is an intolerable bogy that is shockingly close to admitting some kind of evolution; to them it is the evil thin end of the "natural forces" wedge of secularization.  But in my opinion for the Everywhere and Everywhen God T is just as much a divine creation as is S. 

*2 Footnote: Falling into the linguistic trap of "nothing":

Richard tells us this: 

Why Nothing Remains a Problem: The Andrew Loke Fiasco • Richard Carrier Blogs

 What I showed is that once you actually allow for there to be nothing—nothing whatsoever—then a quasi-infinite multiverse is the inevitable, in fact unstoppable outcome. Because removing all barriers to what there can be or what can happen entails allowing all potential outcomes an equal chance at being realized (given only a single constraint: that logically contradictory states have a zero probability of coming to pass). There is nothing there to prevent that, nothing around to keep “nothing” a stable absence of everything. “Nothing” is, by its own defining properties, unstable.

That's not how probability works. Probability isn't a dynamic capable of generating something from nothing: it is about the level of observer information. Moreover, the physics of probability is about describing random patterns and not about the "instability of nothing". Probability and randomness are in no way an argument for the impossibility of "nothing"; trying to use them to generate aseity is well beyond their scope of usage. 

I've seen similar misinterpretations of the Uncertainty Relationship: As Richard is doing here, the principles of probability and randomness are glorified by raising them to the level of a kind of transcendent god-like dynamic or propensity capable of at least creating randomness from nothing. They don't see randomness as being only the mathematical description of a class pattern we meet in the universe rather than being a transcendent creative dynamic.

Another point: The principle of equal a priori probabilities concerns human information levels. That in itself isn't a sufficient condition that automatically translate into reified patterns of randomness.